I think about my life and I see the same. I’ve used drugs and behaviours as my pads and they work for awhile, then I am scraping along on the floor again

I guess life is full of bumps and scrapes that I can’t slide by and trying to slide has made me a less filled out human. This makes me sad. I have tears welling up in me now. Too late, I am left with undeveloped clay.

I better start molding.

w

In a month I will fly back to Canada, my home for 63 years. I will visit places that I have lived for many years. I will see familiar places and people.

It’s no longer my home though. My home is Belize, here I have quickly built roots and a small community. So different from where I came. Arid semi-desert to lush rain forest.

I still have my trusty truck from Canada, but I will fly back, Not my favorite thing! Landing and buying clothes so I don’t freeze in the spring weather of Alberta.

I will miss my cats terribly, even though they will be well cared for in the Cat Kingdom. I will spend to many nights in hotels, on strange beds.

My Mom, I will get to spend time with her as she continues this long journey, perhaps for the last time. Who knows? I will also get to spend time with my sister and her children.

So all in all a necessary sacrifice.

The way the kids cavort, jumping, splashing water and catching little fish in plastic bags.

The leaves that float in the water passing me by, which I will occasionally pick up to see their intricate pattern.

The Green, so vibrant, so many hues. lush and sparse at the same time.

Roots showing where the trees have been undercut by the current.

The eddy that I sit in cooling my body from the 41 celsius heat, while the faster current is farther from shore.

“I want to always be soaking into a prune when it gets that hot!”

I am excited to be going back to Canada, more than anything to be traveling.

Not crazy about the plane rides, but to go the distances that I need to go that’s the only option.

I am feeling the rush building to see my family, the loss of missing my Friend’s and Cat’s.

Fear of my routine being disrupted, of being judged.

The unknown of the weather, the miserliness of spending money.

Frustration of doing my tax’s.

At the best I would know how to put these feelings in a row.

Mostly they bounce around in my head and body, influencing my actions.

I’d like to be better at compartmentalizing, but then I would be treading the dangerous territory of letting myself off the hook and I know where that leads too.

Sometimes I will get nostalgic and a little maudlin.

Thats when it can happen.

Thats when I remember the good/bad.

Thats when how I got here claims my mind.

It’s populated with many wormholes that I can lose myself down.

Many end with me feeling that I am on borrowed time, or possibly dead.

I keep walking though, because if I was dead and not moving I would stink.

When I talk to you though I am reminded that I am.

So keep talking.

Jefferson died today. It feels like the beat did, too. When his heart stopped, so did the beat. I know it’s still there. I just can’t hear it right now.

That’s all.

They say the beat goes on, and on and on. Sometimes it doesn’t. At times it’s not there and no matter how I try, it’s gone. All that I do is a slog through wet cement. Things that are ingrained in me, that require no thought, misfire. It’s like fighting to put it all together.

The fork drops, the spice jar lid won’t go back on the thread. The glass drops, timing is off, things burn. The beat is nowhere to be found, not to be grabbed onto, not to be slid into.

The beat has gone on!

When it is there it’s like a well worn shirt. Things you do in the beat just happen, when it’s not it’s like being in a conversation and all of a sudden running dry. Only to stare off into the distance looking for random words in the sky, so you can reach up and pluck them to put into the desert of your mouth.

In the beat time is a fluid that disappears into an underground tunnel only to surface when the beat slows. Mostly the beat is there when you have good people around. It’s in my heart and theirs. Ìt synchronize’s

Sometimes my beat is strong enough to carry others along with me.

The beat…

We’re here today to see off Vivian. I think there should be at least one black cat here also, although I don’t think the pool would be much of an attraction.

I was going to say our Vivian, but I don’t think we can lay claim to her. Her parents molded a beautiful, intelligent young woman who is moving to Japan to study super conductors.

She visualized this, took the steps necessary, and did the schoolwork, and not only that, she loves cats, where I was lucky enough to meet her.

In a short time she has also become a member of the cat council, and hooked her allergic brother on cats too.

Vivian, you are one of the special people that I have met since I have moved here, and I will miss you ferociously. It’s people like you and Kayleigh, young, intelligent, creative that give me hope for humanity. The rest of us have come to a point where we will have less impact to affect change.

Go out there and have fun. We will all be watching. Come and visit us every once in a while.

It’s so primal. The bass shakes my veins. The hypnotic trance is in my blood, forcing me to move. Up and down from me to you the infection spreads. Soon we are one quivering, shaking mass. The beat…

I was tearing up today as I watched a video about Boy George visiting the former home he grew up in. Now I am not a big Boy George fan so I really couldn’t care much about his boyhood home. I can’t say I have never bopped along to Karma Chameleon, but it wasn’t one of my favorites.

No, it wasn’t George O’Dowd that had me tearing up, it was the act of remembering melancholy things. I was in a space where thinking of the past leaves me in a state quiet resignation, and how things can symbolize that. Pictures, couches, wallpaper, paint, or art, amongst many other things that memories hang from.

When my Grandmother died as grandchildren we got to take a keepsake. I chose a picture of Christ at the last supper that she always had hanging somewhere in her house.

It was not a particularly nice painting, and by then I was at the very least an agnostic. So you might ask why?

It reminded me of her and how she loved us. Once when we lived in Regina we were at a public pool close to my Grandma and Grampas house. It was sunny and hot and I felt like I got sunstroke. My brother and I walked to their house and my Grandma had me lay down on her big, floral patterned couch, after which she put a cloth soaked in cold water on my forehead.

I can remember hearing my Grandpa’s, and my uncles voice coming from the kitchen. They were playing cards. They didn’t care about us, just Grandma.

It’s not really the thing is it? It’s the memory hanging from it.